


See Me

by rijane



Series: See Me universe [2]
Category: Moonlight (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, In the Beginning, Little Beth, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 05:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rijane/pseuds/rijane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mick can't make himself stay away from her and he's not sure he wants to. Sequel to “Stronger”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shhh, I am committing a cardinal sin of fanfic and doing a bit of revising as I go. This is what happens when I have to reread my own stuff.
> 
> Also, I remain a greedy little whore for reviews, but recognize basically everyone still active in this fandom has read and reviewed.
> 
> Many thanks to the long ago beta work by hydriotaphia (who, if she recalls correctly, was so in demand she had to edit me in secret so as not to irritate other authors ;) All mistakes that remain are my own. Or possibly Satan's. He sneaks in and does that sometimes.

It wasn't healthy. Mick knew that. He knew it the same way smokers knew with every puff their lungs were blackening, their breaths shortened, but the promise of the rush, of completing a need in his head and his lungs, made it all meaningless.

He had to stop coming back here. He had to let that little girl live her life without him in it. She'd forgotten, he was pretty sure of that. But he didn't think he ever could.

That was why he was crouched outside her window. Watching her. He tried to resist the pull to her room. The lights stayed on much longer than they would have in any other six-year-old's bedroom.

Mick saw her arms thrown into the air in some strange make-believe dance. She whirled back and forth in front of the window. The lightness of her being calmed the storm in him.

That night, the first night, Beth's mother, choking back sobs, kept brushing at her daughter's hair, rubbing her arms as though to check that the girl was really there.

"She's okay isn't she?" the woman cut in, her voice dropped to a scared whisper, imagining all the hurts a mother couldn't see.

"She's fine. Just ... tired and scared," Mick said. "She wanted her mommy."

Even locked around her mother's waist, Beth had turned to study him. She didn't say a word, a knowing smile playing at her lips.

If he was a worse man or a better vampire, he'd have let Coraline do what she'd planned. He could stand having this soul to take care of for eternity, considering this person family forever.

But Mick knew she deserved better from him. So he turned to leave.

"Thank you," Beth's mother had called out as the door swung shut. He heard the click of a phone being lifted, calls being made.

And Mick had thought that would be the end of it. That he could walk away with just the memory of her light in his life.

Mick had tried to go back to his life, but nothing seemed to fit again. He'd gone back to Josef's, but for the first time in a long time had been completely uninterested in the harem of freshies wandering the mansion. He'd been uninterested in lots of things.

Josef blamed the death of his wife and sire. Mick knew better – it was the presence of something, not just the absence that had changed him.

The first letter from Beth's mother, with a stack of photos from Beth's welcome home party, arrived and Mick locked them in his desk for the longest nights.

But one night, the pictures weren't enough. He'd taken a consulting job with the LAPD, thanks to Bobby. Worsening vision had stuck him in a desk job, but those bad eyes had kept Mick on the department's list.

"It's a bad one, Mick," Bobby's pronouncement when he'd called had been an omen. A woman, just past girlhood, was gone. Last seen in the territory of the Las Cruz gang and every spare officer was out looking.

Mick had dutifully gone after her, smelling the filth baking into the pavement of the neighborhood at dusk. Finally, he'd caught a whiff. Faint, scared.

When he finally tracked the blood, down the block, through a withered yard, inside a boarded-up house, the terror was overwhelming. He heard the clink of belt buckles and the slid of leather through denim before he could smell the blood and sex. One tiny, thready pulse on the verge of stopping.

Mick burst through, angry and the beast unrestrained. He'd reached out to snap the neck of nearest man, his tattooed arms tangled in his falling pants. The others were pumping bullets into him as Mick changed his mind and flung the first one into the wall, breaking off pieces of plaster and crunching some of his bones as well.

The girl, staring up at him from the floor, had Beth's eyes. Her bloody hand was holding in parts of her never meant to see the light of day or dark of night.

Mick turned his ice blue eyes on the remaining two, just boys but as dead in the eyes as him. One made a dash for the door and the other shot him in the back.

"We go down fighting, mijo," the remaining fighter said. His gun was out of bullets. He stepped toward Mick and drew a switchblade from his pocket.

Mick snarled. He dodged the wild swings. His cold hand lifted his opponent into the air and Mick leaned in to rip the human's throat out. A gurgling breath interrupted him.

The girl. Her tired grip had slipped and the blood poured out. Mick growled, he threw the man against the wall and on top of his friend.

Too much blood, Mick knew. He couldn't fix her, doctors probably couldn't fix her, but he loaded her into his arms, pressing down on the knife wounds, the little carvings they had made in her flesh and into the deep of her.

With every bit of speed he had, he dashed through the neighborhood and to the doors of the nearest hospital. As nurses poured from the ER, hauling a gurney and supplies, he set the girl down.

"Fix her," Mick ordered. He had to get away from the blood. He headed for the door, ignoring the woman trying to push paperwork into his hands. Out the door and into the night. Mick pulled himself into the pay phone in front of the hospital and called Bobby to tell him where the gang members were, where the girl was.

His voice caught in mid-sentence. That desperate pulse hiccuped. He paused. It beat one sudden violent time. And it was gone.

"I'm sorry, Bobby," Mick murmured into the phone. "I've just ... I have to go. Get checked out."

He needed blood, he needed... he needed her.

That was the first night he headed to Beth's house. Covered in the girl's blood, bullet holes ripped through his clothes and full of lead, he sat down in the Turners' back yard and watched the windows. Her mother plunged her arms into soapy water, her attention on the little TV in the kitchen.

Looking just as he remembered, Beth sat at the table, coloring, the crayons drawing curves of black and endless blue eyes. Her heartbeat played across him like a lullaby.

Mick's eyes closed as he concentrated on the rhythm, the steady thud and low tone. When his eyes opened, Beth was staring out the picture window, seemingly straight at him.

Mick tensed, trying to convince his predatory nature to pick flight over fight. But she didn't move, just looked out the window into the pitch black yard. Beth gave a small smile and went back to her picture.

That night, he'd only stayed a few minutes, just enough to reassure himself she was still in the world, even if she wasn't in his.

Once he started going, though, he couldn't stop. He found out about things like Strawberry Shortcake and Gem and the Holograms, about "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Encyclopedia Brown." He learned the pitch her voice took when she threw a full-blown temper tantrum and how she danced her way into a room.

He discovered that somehow she'd become a child of the night. A few minutes after her mother left the room, she snapped the lights back on and pulled out a book or a coloring book. Sometimes she would just go to the window and look out into the night like she had that first time.

Those were the nights he both feared and hoped for. In her letters, Beth's mother told him that the girl never talked about her kidnapping. That counselors had tried, that she had tried, but for all they could tell, the memory was buried. The thought that she could so easily forget him bit him deep, but Mick consoled himself with the fact that meant Coraline was gone from her memory, too.

When she came to the window, though, it was like she was waiting for him. It was his own little moment in the sun to see her and to think that maybe she saw him, too.


	2. Chapter 2

He wanted to buy her a pony. That was what you bought eight-year-old girls, ponies and dolls, right?

Of course, Mick knew that Beth was not your average seven-going-on-eight-year-old and that was mostly his fault.

She laughed, she danced, she sang and she drove her mother crazy with endless questions by day. She went to school, loved her teacher, got into trouble for telling wild stories, for smacking a boy on the playground. She hopped on and off the bus with ease now, though her mother still paced the house and met her at the curb the instant the bus pulled up, much to Beth's embarrassment.

But there was a stubborn dark streak in her that wouldn't go away. Despite her mother's vehement refusal, she desperately wanted her father to teach her how to shoot a gun. Her drawings too often had fires and fangs. She never fell asleep before midnight.

Mick was determined to drive it away, by bribery if not sheer force of will.

He'd started out small. He left toys like the ones he had played with as a child, tops, yo-yos, a teddy bear, a cap gun. Mick stashed them in places where only she would find them, under her pillow, inside one small shoe, the drawer for her toothbrush.

Sometimes he'd be watching when she found it. Her reactions were calm, no sequels or shrieks. Just a smile and immediate attempt to master the toy. They would all go into a sticker-covered box, slipped under her bed, behind a tub full of stuffed animals.

He picked up book after book, casually leaning each one in the little white bookshelf. Soon he'd given her a whole shelf of books he could never read to her.

Mick was having a hard time stopping himself. One of his closets was half-filled with baubles he had bought for her but hadn't managed to slip to her yet. When he finally took a case that meant a week of nightlong stake outs in San Bernadino, he went a week without leaving something for her. At the end of it, he almost ran to her room, clutching a handful of costume jewelry when he realized how far gone he was, how far into her life he'd intruded.

Like an alcoholic determined to finish the bottle before giving it up, Mick made a deal with himself. He would give Beth one last present on her birthday, three days from now, but he could give her anything, one grand gesture. Hence, the pony.

Never having ridden a horse in his entire existence, he'd summoned Josef to come with him to the stable to pick one out.

"You're completely insane," his friend had said as the horses nervously nickered around them.

"Mick, what the hell will a she do with a pony? This kid lives in Long Beach, not Kentucky."

Mick let the nearest horse sniff him, the cool wet nostrils blowing past his skin. The horse stomped and edged to the back of the stall, whinnying with nerves.

"We're not so bad," Josef told the animal as he reached into his pocket. "Besides, you taste nasty, big guy."

A handful of sugar cubes went from Josef's hand to the horse's mouth in a practiced move. A tongue licked his palm, followed by a snout nosed toward his jacket, in search of more.

Mick hesitated.

"What kind of present would you get a kid?"

"I wouldn't get her anything," Josef folded his arms. "But seeing how you're crazy enough to consider this whole thing in the first place, I'd just go with cash. Easy, untraceable, completely transferable."

Mick shook his head.

"I want something, something... bright, something that makes her happy. Something that reminds her -" of me. "That life is good."

He left Josef to his busy night of Asian markets and buyouts and headed to Beth's house, searching for ideas. It was after midnight, but the light in her room was still on, the only one in the house. The room seemed empty though, her blankets askew but the bed empty. An irrational surge of panic cut through Mick. He cut across the yard, still unable to see her.

Mick silently pulled himself into the branches of a nearby tree, getting the height he needed to spot her just below the window, curled up on the floor with her head resting on a copy of "Five Children and It," that he'd tucked into her backpack early one morning.

He dropped from the tree and found himself at her window, watching her little chest breathe in and out, her neck cricked to the side and body slumped over. His fingers laid themselves against the cool glass and the unlatched window swung in.

Mick stumbled back, not expecting the movement of the surface and unsure whether he had pushed or it had already been open. Her little girl smell tumbled over him. Soap, dirt, a splash of soda, laundered cotton and the indefinable scent of Beth.

It pulled him into the room and it was too late. He was standing over her trying to resist the urge to snatch her up and run.

Instead, he dogeared the book and silently moved it next to her bed. Mick oh-so-carefully wrapped his arms around her. She had gained inches, but few pounds. Beth was as light as she'd been that night more than three years ago. Her blond hair had grown out, down to her shoulders and fly aways tickling his arms.

In one smooth movement, he swung her toward the bed, listening to her heartbeat to catch any sign of waking. Nothing. Mick adjusted the pillow and pulled the sheet up, waiting to see if maybe she would happen to crack her eyes open, happen to hear his gentle movements and see him, if just for a moment.

But she didn't. Her eyes stayed shut.

Mick closed and locked window, not that it would stop any true monster. His scent, however, might give them pause.

"Good night, Beth," he slipped out of the house and drove back to his apartment, thrilled and a little terrified.

The next night, early, the window was not just unlocked. It was wide open. Mick saw Beth, laying on the floor with the book, in nearly the same position as before, but this time her heart thudded with the intensity of her consciousness.

He could almost hear her blinking as she waited. He stood outside her window, still as death. One of those precious bits of human knowledge he was forgetting, Mick wondered if her human hearing could detect his feet moving through the grass or the closing of his car door down the road.

His heart, willfully silent for so long, started keening for her sweet face and welcoming gaze, for the chatter he heard from her kitchen, for the steady questions she would produce one by one and the soft touch of a child unafraid.

But he heard a sigh from the little body. She rose and, in a flash, Mick moved far enough away that no one inside could see him.

Beth swung the pane shut, her shoulders hunched and head hanging. Mick fled into the night.

For Beth's birthday, Mick did not bring a pony. He did clutch a crumpled birthday card from Beth's mother as he left his apartment. The invitation came every year with a school photo, a few other snapshots that Mick memorized, then meticulously filed away in his cabinets as though this had been any other case.

He didn't have a present. All the trinkets, the toys, the flights of fancy weren't what Beth wanted. He knew now what the little girl craved, what kept her eyes open to the moonlight.

Lights flipped on and off throughout the Turner house. Living room out; bathroom on, then off; Beth's light off; a hallway light on; the master bedroom on and off, then Beth's on again. Mick listened to her parents' breathing settle into the depths of sleep before moving into the yard.

In her ballerina pajamas, Beth was carefully organizing new toys into old boxes, pushing aside shorn Barbies for their new long-haired companions and inhaling the scent of Strawberry Shortcake's hair.

Mick was just steps from her window when she froze in place. She was tilted away from the window, but maybe something had reflected, caught her eye.

She didn't try to fool him this time. Beth pivoted in her own little dance move, so that she was looking Mick straight on. She saw him and he let himself be seen.

The window was open again. Mick deftly climbed in. A tinkling laugh came from Beth.

"You're here!" she whispered.

"Yeah, kid," Mick leaned down and ruffled her hair. "Straight from heaven, just for you."

He had a feeling she didn't appreciate his dry tone.

Beth wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. Then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, she pulled him to the floor. A tattered copy of "Where the Wild Things Are" peeked from beneath a pile of toys. With a yank, Beth unearthed it and flipped it open.

"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind..." Mick began as Beth nestled next to him, unperturbed by his cold.

He finished the book, she read him the next and halfway through the third, he felt her begin to droop. Her head fell against his arm, her slow breathing pumped in and out. He gathered her up, earning a small grunt of resistance. But she willingly tumbled into bed, sleep taking her over with a smile on her face.

"Good night, Beth," he whispered. "Happy Birthday."


	3. Chapter 3

Mick's intrusion into Beth's life didn't go without consequence. Beth spent the next year with her window open. Even as rain tumbled in and the temperatures dropped, she stubbornly unlatched it and let the room chill. Her parents had debated putting a padlock on the window, only the fear of a fire had stopped them.

Finally, her mother had come up with an ingenious solution: a cat.

He'd wandered into their garage, through some unknown hidey hole and mewled at the steps. He was clean, not tragically thin like most stray cats and he loved Beth at first sight. She'd named him Bogart, as in Humphrey.

"Beth, if you want to keep him, the window is going to have to stay shut," her mother secured herself in the doorway of Beth's room. "If it's open, he could jump out and until he knows this is home, he'll never come back."

A year of waiting, of watching and knowing that her angel was out there passed through her eyes. Her birthday had come and gone unmarked except for a plain card with hand-drawn cartoon angels bearing a birthday cake and the simple message, "Happy birthday – M"

No more presents to put in her angel box, no visitors in the middle of the night, nothing.

And so Beth moved to the window.

She opened it wide, leaned out and whispered into the night, "I miss you."

Then she closed it. Flipped the latch and turned to her mother.

It was for her own good, Mick repeated to himself. In fact, he was tempted to get it tattooed some place, though he doubted a tattoo would stay on his skin for long. Maybe he should get it tattooed nightly. He needed the reminder that often.

He'd made his grand gesture. He'd let her see him.

But every day turned to night and Mick was back where he started. Except he was dragging an eight-year-old child down with him.

So he got busy. He took on case after case, he hunted down drug dealers and murderers, adulterers and thieves. He sorted through every life Coraline had ravaged and the ones he himself had ruined.

Every year on the anniversary of the attack, a letter from Beth's mother arrived, gushing over her daughter. The good grades, the stories she'd written, the local theater she'd joined, how much Beth loved horseback riding at her aunt's ranch in Utah, the dances she'd put on in the living room to "Miss Otis Regrets" and all the little things that made her child so special in a mother's eyes. She closed with a simple thank you and, despite Mick's silence, the letters continued to come.

And Mick managed to steal himself against seeing these things with his own eyes. Mostly.

Like the newly turned, he slipped. Driving late into the night, he found his car drifting down roads that headed away from his penthouse, from Josef's buildings and toward that house with the little treasure. Sometimes he turned the wheel away, sometimes he didn't.

The nights he actually made it to her house, he didn't get out of the car. He simply counted the heartbeats, sifting Beth's from them with a practiced ease. It shocked him when he heard an echo next to her, a strange faint beat that he couldn't identify.

His eyes slipped to ice blue and he felt his fangs push down. He was out of his seat and to window in a flash. It was a shock to find the thing shut and latched. But even Beth's tenacity had its limits.

Mick peered in. There was a huge, furry lump on Beth's chest. Finally it clicked -- a cat. The huge, gray beast slept on her chest during this dark hour of the night, like he was guarding her very breath.

"Hey Bogart," he whispered, catching sight of his tags. "Where's Bacall?"

The tail flickered and the cat stared at him through slits. Back arched, the feline moved from the warm spot on Beth's chest. He tumbled to the floor and jumped to the window frame.

Mick inhaled the new smells in the room. He saw the waves of fur winding through Beth's jean-clad legs, a purr kicking up every time she walked in the door. The cat's pale stomach exposed to her with a pleading mewl. Beth crouching to rub him up and down.

Beth on her back on the floor next to him, caressing the cat in quick strokes, then falling back as he hopped on her chest and began kneading his paws into her, rubbing his face and scent over her.

Bogart stared at Mick, daring the vampire to come inside. With regret, Mick yielded to the cat and turned away, thankful she had something to give her comfort through the long nights. Mick brushed a hand against the window pane and returned to this car.

One month later, Mick again heard the frantic voice of Beth's mother. This time over the phone.

"She's gone," the woman nearly shrieked at him. "The damn cat got out and Beth went after him. I woke up and she was gone. There was a note. The police won't do anything for a runaway. I didn't know who else to call. You have to help us."

"How long?"

"I don't know," a pause. "Some time after midnight? We stopped looking for Bogart, her cat, around ten. It was cold and... "

"I'm heading over now," Mick dropped the phone into its cradle with enough force to shatter the plastic.

Mick swigged the pint of blood in his hand, slipped his sunglasses into the pockets of his long-sleeved jacket. He had a few hours until sunrise, but he wasn't coming back until Beth was home again.

Beth's smell, tinged with fur and feline, was all around the house, the yard. Mick found the trail quickly, weaving through neighbors' yard in what Beth must have imagined was the ideal cat path. Slipping between split fence posts, across grass, down a sloping ditch and back to a culvert. A mile and a half from her house.

Mick tumbled down the embankment. There, a plastic flashlight. Broken, but hers. Her little blonde head was nowhere to be found, though. He splashed through knee deep water, feeling for anything below the surface. Nothing.

A growl rumbled from his chest. Mick felt his eyes flicker with ice blue fear and anger. He dragged himself out of the ditch, searching for a sign of her. Eyes closed, he blew out the smell of stale water and rancid grass clippings.

Where would she go? Mick tried to clear his mind, think like Beth. On one side was a road, not terribly busy in the early morning hours, but with a couple of cars every few minutes and picking up speed as commuters took to the road.

Past the road, office buildings, stretches of concrete and metal. The other side was an empty lot, patches of grass surrounded by clots of mud, rusted barrels and abandoned equipment.

There – on the wind came the faintest hint of her, a splash of her blood – Mick inhaled deeply.

The lot.

With the perfume of her blood, tinged with fear and desperation and tears, Mick gave up pretense. Fanged and eyes flashing, he surrendered to the predatory instinct to hunt. The vampire knew to look for mud on patches of grass, for the drops of water, the slightest stumble leaving sweat and skin. The vampire knew that sun was coming and Beth was near.

He flew over old steel as the haze of pre-dawn settled over the shadowy scene. The skeletons of aborted buildings were laced with her scent. Past them, feet barely touching the dirt, into a copse of orange trees, a wooded island in the midst of over development. Exactly where Beth would go and where Mick caught her heartbeat.

The crack of a young tree trunk ripped through the morning. There she was, curled into a ball, streams of tears drying clear paths on her dirty cheeks. A gash in her arm, flecked with bits of rusted metal.

The vamp wanted to suckle her arm and gasped in anticipation before Mick thrust the urges aside.

The heavy pressure of impending sun rippled across his skin. He shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around her, checking for other injuries. A bruise here, a turned ankle.

Mick gathered her exhausted little body into his arms. She just shifted, falling into the bend of his elbow, burrowing against his neck. The wind whipped Beth's hair across his face while he held her steady and dashed through the shadows, back to her house.

At the edge of her yard Mick pulled her close to him. He smoothed her hair back.

"Don't do this again, kid," he told her. "You are not a cat. You do not have nine lives, so don't waste this one."


	4. Chapter 4

"Mick, self-flagellation does not look good on you, my friend," Josef announced at the end of their weekly poker game. Mick rolled his remaining vials into his pockets.

"What?"

"Don't 'what' me, kid," Josef swilled down part of his winnings. "You're deep into your semi-annual self-loathing marathon and it's not fun for anyone. Least of all me."

Mick thought about denying it, but decided not to waste his time.

Once Beth had been bandaged and bundled into bed, Mick had headed back outside. The sun slanted bright on the suburban sidewalks, casting no shadows on the front stoop when the P.I. deposited a carrier containing a hissing, yowling cat on the doorstep.

As soon as the feline was indoors, the windows were latched, doors securely shut, the garage door closed and every possible means of escape for cats or kids locked tight.

And Mick felt himself locked out of that world, knowing it was all for the best. She was almost past the time of believing in magic and make believe, when Mick could just be part of a surreal dream that bled into waking life.

Holding on to the belief that his absence rather than his presence was better for the girl, Mick stepped away. He counted on her mother's letters, which came even more often after the last rescue. Those life rafts kept him away from her and let her Guardian Angel drift away.

This time he lasted weeks, sometimes months, without succumbing to the urge to check on her. He removed the framed school photo of her from his desk, which had been the one external concession to his burgeoning fixation. Client assumed it was his daughter and he didn't bother to correct them.

Next the old letters were folded, put back into the envelopes and put in his wall safe, along with the files from Beth's case. He kept a stash of photos in the filing cabinet, for the nights that lasted into forever. But he didn't go back to her.

The weeks stretched to months and the months into years and with the blur of time that came with immortality, two years had passed. Mick had lived in darkness for two more years.

Then the invitation came, bearing garish yellow and pink swirls and the grinning faces of some group, "New Kids on the Block," inviting him to "Beth's birthday bash at the beach." Ten years old. A decade of her in the world. A blink of an eye for him.

And that was went his "self-loathing marathon" began, the night of poker at Josef's. His friend had almost had to bodily drag Mick to his penthouse and once there, everyone knew he was in a mood.

"Mick, this is going to be a very bad decade if this is how you plan to spend it. I'm all for how crappy it makes your poker strategy, but you have to find something else. Bite her, bleed her, whatever. Move on," Josef instructed.

"I'm trying. I don't know if I can."

"Figure it out."

Mick closed his eyes and tried to explain. "The night I killed ... the night Coraline died, the whole world shifted for me. For the first time since I was turned... I thought maybe I could be the good guy, if only to one little girl. Not being able to be there, to protect her, to see her – it's like have the world ripped from me all over again."

"Wow, Mick, that's really creepy," Josef stood from the table and hit the buzzer. "I need a drink."

"Josef, she's a kid. It's not…" Mick pinched the bridge of his nose, fending off an imaginary headache. "I know how it sounds, but she is how I know that I've done something with the time I've got. I see her. And I just want her to see me."

"Not gonna happen, Mick," Josef took an uncharacteristically soft tone. "Children don't need to know there are really monsters under the bed. They find out how awful the world can be fast enough. Let her be innocent as long as you can."

"I know," Mick stood to leave.

"And try not to make the rest of us suffer as much as you in the meantime, okay?"

******* 

One week later, as Mick let the bone chill of the freezer carry him to oblivion, Beth was in the ocean, laughing, letting waves crash over her. She let herself be buried in the sand, built sandcastles and collected keepsakes from the water's edge.

Her friends burnt their feet on the sand, piled plates high with hotdogs and chips and let themselves race through the exuberant energy of childhood. By the end of the day, everyone was tiredly packing up the beach house her parents had rented for the weekend. Grown-up voices floated from the kitchen and Beth knew this would be her only chance to do what she'd planned.

Her mother's paranoia had faded with time, but not by much. She had forbidden Beth to leave the house without telling her, even to the yard. It had taken a solid six months of whining to convince her parents that a beach birthday was absolutely essential to turning ten. She'd wheedled, she'd connived, she'd wept and begged.

In the end, they took a long weekend and Beth had her party at a beach far enough away from her house that she had never been and one she was pretty sure she couldn't get to again on her own.

What her parents didn't know was that Beth had more important things that party plans on her mind. Quietly leaving her friends to collect their wet suits and salty towels, she grabbed the shoebox from her suitcase.

Most of the stickers were peeling, the glitter faded. But everything was in there, the toys, the books, the notes.

This had to be done by the light of the day, she was sure. In fact, the brighter the sun, the stronger Beth's resolve. She didn't think she could do this at night, when she remembered better.

The box tucked under her arm, she took a shovel from the collection of tools on the side porch and took off down the beach. When they had been running up and down the sand, she found the spot. Under an overhang, behind a stretch of beach scrub. Far from the house, past the reach of the tide.

Beth set the box in the shade and started in at the sand. Sweat poured from her and she tried to hurry. Eventually her mother would notice her gone.

Finally, the hole was deep enough for her satisfaction, three feet or so, past sand and hitting soil. Beth picked up her angel box and opened it for one final time. She ran her hand over the treasures, the marbles she never played with but loved to hear clinking against each other, the books she'd re-read with a different voice in her head, the half-dead bear that had lived on her bed before Bogart.

She dropped the lid back on and set the box into the hole.

Either sweat or tears burned her eyes as the dirt went back in. Her arms screamed with the effort, but Beth packed the hole firmly.

"I have to go, okay?" she whispered. "And I can't come back for you. You try not to miss me and I'll try not to miss you anymore."

She ran back to the house and didn't look back.


	5. Chapter 5

Mick kept an open box of Cheerios in the cupboard, next to the coffee can and the unused filters. At some point, he'd have to throw out that box and buy another decoy. Maybe something sugary, with a cartoon character telling hungry children to beg their parents for it. Or maybe oatmeal. Good for the cholesterol, he'd heard.

But, as twilight descended, he gulped down his real breakfast, liquid and crimson.

Like the old man he was, Mick flipped to the obituaries first. Every other day now, someone he knew and sometimes loved in his past life was gone.

It was there he saw it in black and white - a grainy, smiling mug shot, a few inches down, in the back pages of the second section.

"Michael Turner, age 48, passed away Monday afternoon, April 14, 1993 at St. Francis Mercy Hospital.

Michael was born November 11, 1955 in Colorado Springs, Colo. to Carl and Charlotte Turner. He married Diane (Smith) Turner June 4, 1980 and she survives in Long Beach.

Also surviving are a son, Matthew Turner, and a daughter, Elizabeth Turner..."

He couldn't get past that line. It was only one he needed. His heart ached for her.

Then his logic kicked in. Diane had sent him an update just a week ago. With a snapshot of Beth sitting on a dock, smiling next to a very healthy-looking father. They were at a family reunion in San Diego. Diane had kidded about Beth's crush on a cute cousin or two. His chest tightened, borrowed trouble on his mind.

Mick flipped the pages, hard enough to rip one, creasing the newsprint and scanning the headlines.

There – a shot of a crumpled car, a short story with a stark headline, "Accident leaves two dead, two injured." His eyes took in the words faster than he could comprehend them.

"Two people were fatally injured in a two-car accident on I-10, at 9:02 p.m. Monday.

According to the Orange County post of the State Highway Patrol, Beatrice Perkins, 83, was driving a 1983 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight west on I-10 when she drove off the left side of the roadway and into the center median. The vehicle struck a raised crossover, causing the vehicle to go airborne and overturn several times before striking a 1992 Honda Accord driven by Michael Turner, 48.

Ms. Perkins was ejected from the vehicle and was declared dead at the scene. Mr. Turner was taken by Med-Flight to St. Vincent Medical Center, where he died.

Treated and released from the same hospital was Matthew Turner, 19. A second passenger, Elizabeth Turner, 12, was also transported to St. Vincent where she is listed in critical condition.

Obituaries for Perkins and Turner appear on page A9 of today's paper."

The paper dropped and Mick's silent heart thudded. She was hurt. Bad.

This was a morning paper. There had been hours and hours since the accident.

He'd know if she was gone, Mick told himself. His heart was walled off from her everyday existence, but the trickle of life from her to him never stopped completely.

Without a thought, he dropped the bloody glass. Out the door and a risky plunge down the stairwell. Mick slowed his descent, knocking against the banister, before landing with a bone-cracking thud at the bottom.

He sped down the road.

At the hospital, the antiseptic odor barely dented the whiff of blood in every corner. The broken, sick bodies as unappetizing as rotten meat. But others, fresh, screamed for him to stop.

Mick raced to the third floor, past the nurses' stations in a blur. In the intensive care unit, he caught the faint odor of Diane's perfume in the hall outside a private room.

He listened. A heartbeat. Faint but present. He opened the door gingerly.

The little girl, older than he remembered, but small, so small, under white blankets. The machines kept time with her heart and the bellows pumped her lungs for her. Tubes everywhere, up her nose, under the sheets, another down her throat, wires pacing her life in and out. An IV drawing faint blood from the hand clutched by a sleeping mother.

She didn't smell right. Her insides were outside and foreign blood invaded her every part. The starchy hint of black surgical thread sighed against her skin. He listened, a lung weeping. Something torn. Things that couldn't be fixed.

Silently, he closed the distance to brush her forehead. To prove that she was still in the world, however close to the border she shuffled. No pumping, breathing warmth that he should have felt under his cool hand.

He felt the machines count off to him. Beth. Not Beth. Dead. Not dead.

Desperate, Mick backed from the room toward the bank of payphones down the hall.

"Josef," Mick said as soon as the receiver clicked through. His tone silenced any smart-ass reply from his friend. "I need to know. How much of my blood can a human take without turning?"

"What the hell are you doing, Mick?" for the first time in years, the older vampire sounded genuinely shocked.

"She's dying, Josef." He didn't need to explain.

"What do you think you can do about it?"

"Just answer the question. A pint? A drop? How far is too far?" Mick worried the ring on his finger. "How much is too much?"

"Don't do anything stupid, Mick." Josef hesitated.

"If you don't tell me, I'll have to guess."

A beat of silence.

"If you want to turn someone, you have to drain them. Maybe seven, eight pints. She'll need your blood. Fast. As much as you can get her to drink."

"I'm not asking how to turn her," Mick growled into the phone, his grip nearly shattering the plastic. "I want to know how much of my blood can she take without turning."

"Jesus, Mick," the sound of Josef sinking into his chair came over the tinny wires. "That's dangerous. For you and for her. Are you thinking long term?"

"Yes. Josef, I know what I'm doing," Mick lied as the panic rose.

The silence stretched this time.

"How old is she?"

"Twelve."

"How bad?"

"Very." Mick closed his eyes and willed away the image of her brokenness, the smell of bodily fluids.

"Less than half a pint, no more. We're a vicious little breed. Any more will eat her alive and I'm sure you don't want that," the clink of bottles and an unabashed gulp came from Josef's end. "Do it slow or they'll notice. A little bit every couple hours until she's better or until morning, whichever comes first. If it doesn't help her by then, it's causing more harm than good."

"Okay."

"And you drink, too. Something clean. Where are you?"

"St. Vincent."

"I'll send something to the place on Talmadge."

"Thank you."

"Wait a couple of days before you say that."

Mick gently set the phone down and raced back to Beth's room.

Of course, he'd forgotten her mother was there, making things more complicated. He intentionally bumped one of the metal stools, making a shrieking noise as it shuddered across the floor. Diane started. Her bloodshot eyes opened and, after a second, focused on Mick. Then she took in the hospital room.

"Oh, for just a second I forgot," the woman whispered. "Mr. St. John, what are you doing here?"

"I saw the paper and ... I thought maybe ... I just wanted to help," Mick's eyes flickered to Beth. Her heartbeats were steady. A little faster maybe? He wanted to count the beats, keep the time, but Diane was already staring at him. "I didn't know how bad she was."

"She wasn't even supposed to be in the car. I was running late and Mike was getting Matt at the airport. I asked him to pick up Beth from dance practice. He wasn't supposed to be there, none of them were. Mike should have had Matt and been home. They shouldn't have been on that road," Diane told him flatly.

"She's going to be fine. You can't waste time blaming yourself for something like this," Mick felt like such a fool. Her words were the same ones that came from him on a regular basis. "Bad things happen. And you have to be strong for her."

Diane wiped at the tears that continued to leak out. Mick fished in his pocket, pulling out a handful of coins.

"Why don't you get some coffee? Go to the bathroom, call your son," he pressed the money into her shaking hand. "I'll sit with her."

Beth's mother just nodded and left for the lounge.

The vampire counted the footsteps, opened himself to the sounds and smells of the other humans. No one near. Then he turned his attention to Beth. She couldn't drink him in, not with the tube.

Mick carefully searched her body. All the major wounds were bandaged and wrapped tight. He sniffed for fresh blood. There, her left arm, a tiny cut, not wide but deep. He pulled back the bandage slowly.

His fangs descended and eyes flashed. In one smooth moment, he punctured his skin, angling the wound over hers. A trickle found its way into her body before the flow stopped as Mick's cut healed itself.

Her color was just as pale, but Mick counted her heartbeats. They picked up. Just a fraction.

And the horrible whooshing sound from her lung relented infinitesimally. Maybe. Mick sat in Diane's chair and held Beth's hand, letting the sounds of the hospital wash past him until the only sound was Beth's heart, Beth's breath, Beth.

Three hours later, Diane's face was washed, her teeth brushed and she was back at her post. Mick sat with her for an hour and when she left for the bathroom, she was gone long enough for a second deposit. Shortly thereafter, a surprised nurse ushered Mick out, accompanied by a lecture about protocol, sign-in procedures and hospital rules.

Mick nodded respectfully and exited the hospital, thankfully just a mile or two from Josef's establishment. A place with emergency supplies, fresh, that Mick sucked down. He had the proprietor fill a silver thermos with a couple of pints and returned to the hospital.

Time seemed to drag. The shifts changed at midnight and he still had an hour to fill. A small brown room with the glow of candles in red votives caught his attention. The familiar smell of incense drew him into the small chapel. An large open Bible dominated the small altar with its wooden cross and clusters of candles.

Mick shut the door and sat in one of the pews. He didn't linger in churches the way he did as a boy, afraid the remnants of his faith wouldn't last with regular use, but today he needed it.

Wishing for a rosary, he fell to the kneeler and recited a Hail Mary, then an Our Father, secure in the comfort of ritual. The prayers faded into his own murmured, desperate hopes that he was doing the right thing, that Beth would be fine, that God would forgive him for all his sins, past, present and future enough to grant him this request.

Time slipped from him, his head bowed and every part of him in desperate prayer for Beth. At last, he ran out of words. Mick stood. He moved to the altar, picked up a candle and lit it.

At last, well past midnight, he headed to Beth's room, skirting the nurse's station again. Her mother slept a drug-induced sleep on a pull out couch at the other end of the room.

Mick put his head to Beth's chest, listening intently to her heart, counting. The beats were steadier. He imagined he could hear her bones knitting themselves together, her bruises fading.

"Beth, keep fighting," he whispered.

He inspected Beth's hand where the cut had been. It wasn't nearly as deep. More a scrape than a gash.

The rest of her injuries were worse – skin ripped away, chunks of missing flesh – protected from infection by the layers of gauze. Mick looked around and found a surgical tray with a clean hypodermic.

In the reverse of his regular habit, he drew out blood from his arm and rubbed Beth's, feeling for a vein. At the crook of her arm, he injected her and hoped that his vampire status would actually do her some good this time.

He stared at the broken girl. Her hair had grown out to her shoulders and mellowed to a rich golden tone. Taller, of course. And she had hips. Beth was on the verge of moving from a child to a young woman.

She had changed so quickly, but children did that, didn't they? He couldn't really remember. He'd had nieces and nephews, but they were just toddlers the last time he'd seen them and after Coraline, he didn't see them. They were old enough to have children Beth's age by now. He was probably a great-uncle to a brood somewhere.

He heard footfalls and the rustle of scrubs from the hallway. Mick tucked himself in the tiny private bathroom. The movement of cords, the scratching of a pen and the flipping of paper. Buttons pushed and the paper again.

"What the hell?" Footsteps out of the room echoed and a few minutes later, two women returned. Mick peeked through a crack in the door.

"I'm telling you, this kid was dying six hours ago. The internal injuries, the blood loss. I've never seen anyone, especially not this young, make it back from this. I didn't even expect to see her by my shift," the first nurse insisted.

The older woman she had brought studied the chart, watched the numbers flash on the monitors. She pursed her lips.

"You're right," the woman laid a soft hand on Beth's forehead. "She's not out of the woods yet, though. Every once in a while we get a miracle. Maybe she's it."

Mick emerged from the bathroom once their footsteps faded. He settled back into the chair and grasped her hand, worrying her digits like a rosary and hoping that she would be his miracle one more time.


	6. Chapter 6

It hurt. Beth would have screamed if she could.

She just gagged and tried to cough the thing inside of her out, but it wouldn't move. She thrashed and that hurt more. The new pain temporarily distracted her from the thing snaking down her throat. Blinding pain in her chest, her legs, her head.

It washed away and then her mother was hovering above her. A woman she didn't know came into her line of sight.

"Sweetie, calm down," the strange woman said. Beth hated being called sweetie. Or honey. Or darling. "On three, breathe out and we'll take the tube out. One, two, three."

Beth exhaled with all the force she could muster. It felt like sandpaper on her throat and a coughing fit seized her. Wheezing and more pain. She wanted to throw up but decided that would hurt too much.

"Bethy," her mother's arms wrapped around the girl, pressing on fading bruises and barely sealed wounds.

"Mom," the scratchy whisper came from Beth. She closed her eyes. Things looked different. People looked … brighter.

Her mother burst into tears with a shudder.

"Too loud, Mom," Beth whispered. "Too much."

With that, her heavy eyes closed again.

The next thing she heard was the beeping. That incessant pattern that wouldn't go away. Without opening her eyes, she felt her mother nearby. Warm, but spring-loaded. The moment Beth moved or an eyelid trembled, she'd be back.

Her head felt ... strange. Parts of it felt crystal clear. The rough patches of hospital sheets worked against her, the needle throbbed, the individual specks of dust floating through the air. Beth found herself listening to the rhythm of her lungs and the bear of her heart, caught up in the patterns of her own body.

But other parts were muted and bundled away from her waking self. Something had happened. Something very bad. But the only thing her addled mind could produce was pain, spiced with brief moments of relief.

The sharp pains that came with every breath finally forced her to groan.

"Baby," her mother was on her in an instant, hand on her daughter's.

"Hurt, Mom," she didn't recognize her own voice and that scared her. Her mother leaned over and pushed a button at the side of the bed. A warm rush came over her. It was better, but Beth wished for something cool to take away the pain.

Once she wasn't being sucked under the tide of her own body's pain, Beth stiffly tilted toward her mother.

"Where's Daddy? Matty?" she held her breath and urged her mother to give her the answer she wanted, not the one she feared. When she saw tears, she knew.

"Matty will be here soon. Your father..."

Beth gently squeezed her mother's hand, the one that still wore the wedding ring, the heirloom engagement ring, ones Beth begged to try on and that had only recently begun to fit her fingers. Ones that Beth hoped her mother would never take off again.

The girl in her wanted to sob. Shudders already began in her, the white hot pain cracking at her lungs, clutching at her heart. So the grown-up part of her compromised, sending her back into oblivion.

Each time Beth woke, she lasted longer. As the physical pain ebbed, the emotional fallout crashed against her, slowly carving out a hole where her father had been, where her life had been. Nothing would be the same. She wouldn't be the same.

She didn't let anyone visit except her mother and Matt. Her brother, his face a puzzle of bruises and cuts, could barely look at his sister. They came after the funeral that Beth had to miss. They talked about Daddy. They worked their way up and down the cable channels. They went through the motions of being together until Matt finally kissed Beth on the head and left for school in Colorado again.

Every day flowers appeared in the room. No nurse brought them, no one knew where they were from, but inevitably, when Beth woke from one nap or another, there they were. The first day, a huge bouquet of white roses appeared. Then tulips, followed by daisies, then sunflowers. Never signed. The mystery drove her crazy, until Beth decided to pretend they were from her father.

Her doctors ordered her to bed, forbade her to leave it for the first week, but Beth pushed and pushed. Finally, an overworked nurse lifted her into a wheelchair one night and, with an intricate dance of moving wires and machines, moved her to the window.

"I'll be back after my rounds and you're back in bed. No arguments."

She stared out into the night, which wasn't as dark as she remembered. There seemed to be more stars. For a second, a flash of a different skyline. Less smog, fewer buildings.

Beth wanted to open the window to see how that city smelled, but the glass was sealed tight. For a second, she thought of throwing one of the machines at it and shattering the damn thing.

Instead, she pressed her face against the cool surface and stared, examining block after block, not knowing what she was looking for.

The dreams came at night, but the most vivid ones were during the day. She saw eyes, flickering in color from brown to green to ice blue, watching her. Her hand felt for the person, but never closed on him. It was a him. And he was always near but never within reach.

One morning, as the sun rose high and Beth slept, she saw him. A dark ink stain of shadow clung to his face, rippling across his body. Beth moved as though she would wipe it away. He dodged her hand.

"Who are you?" Beth said plainly.

He shook his head. A hand rose to her face.

"Why can't I see you?"

"This is me."

And she woke.

Bones healed, organs pumping as they should, the hospital finally released Beth. As the wheelchair creaked down the hall, the baker's dozen of dried bouquets on her lap, fear overtook her.

Here she could hide from the truth. She could pretend her father was on a trip, that he'd be back soon. But home was where he was supposed to be and wasn't. It would be the sum of his absence -- the rich smell of his occasional cigar, mixed with after shave and soap wouldn't be there. She couldn't dial his office to ask a question about her history homework. His wallet and watch wouldn't be flung amid piles of change on coffee table.

Her mother, carrying the huge suitcase of clothes, toiletries and books Beth had accumulated while at the hospital, hurried to the car, plopped the box in and opened the door for the orderly to maneuver her broken leg into the sedan. 

That night in her bedroom, Bogart took his regular place on her bed and Beth let herself cry a little. A strange urge overtook her, a memory or a dream. She turned to the window, closed and locked.

Disturbing the unhappy cat, Beth hobbled from her bed to the window. She lifted the latch and went back to bed, drifting into unsettled sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Beth swung up into the saddle and made a face as Matt snapped another photo with the camera Mom had sent along. 

"No more. My hair looks horrible with the helmet on," Beth tugged at the chinstrap and stuck her tongue out with the flash.

In the last four years, her family had begun taking pictures, documenting everything as if they might have to prove their existence later. Rolls and rolls of film filled with mundane moments, fake smiles and absent people. There was a drawer in the kitchen dedicated to not-yet-developed rolls.

"You're seriously okay with doing this on your own?" Matt questioned from below.

"I'm not alone. I've got Bella," Beth leaned in and patted her horse's neck. "Go, be responsible, finish your paper. I'll be fine."

Matt glanced at his watch.

"I'll be at the library in south quad while you're on the ride. I will be right here when you finish. Do not move. Do not follow some freshman to his dorm. Do not take candy from strangers. Do not do anything stupid, alright?" Matt backed away from his sister with reluctance.

"Don't worry so much. You'll get wrinkles," Beth called as they slowly moved away from the fence and down into the cool shadows of the forest.

Beth was at the end of the line of trail horses. She adjusted her seat and wished the guide would lose sight of her, just for a bit.

People rarely just left her alone nowadays. Her mother, her friends, her grandparents, her brother. Someone was always there to distract her from the feelings she got when she had time to think. The feeling of missing something, looking for eyes that always rested on her. Beth suspected she'd be a very different person away from the crowd. But, then again, she had made the decision to walk away from alone two years ago.

She was weird – that was the general opinion of the eighth grade class of Marshall Junior High by the time she left it. When Beth finished out her seventh grade year, most kids were nice. Her friends gave sympathetic looks, awkward hugs and helped her navigate the stairs on crutches for the last two months of school. Boys were assigned to carry her books and teachers let her turn papers in late, skip projects altogether.

But her grief had a much longer shelf life than their patience.

There were no tears. That would have been easier, normal. Beth just drifted, in and out of conversations, through the halls. She was the only girl in their science class who willingly grabbed a knife and started cutting into her frog, pinning back the skin and scooping out the little black eggs. When her anatomy class visited the state coroner's office, Beth had to fake a shudder when clear jars heavy with body parts – skin samples, organ tissue – were passed around.

Strange flashes came to her, though fewer and farther between. The city from a dizzying height, she'd felt pain like a sunburn skating across her skin even in the shade. And she smelled phantom odors. Especially blood. Copper and something more, lingering in her fallible nose. 

After a handful of CAT scans, two pediatricians, a neurologist and tests she couldn't pronounce, Beth was left in the not-so-capable hands of psychiatrist Roger Newsome. He diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder, forcing her to describe the accident, to remember details of her father's death in as vivid detail as she could manage. Again. And again.

Four sessions later, Beth stopped talking about what she saw.

"I just needed to talk about it," she told her mother over dinner one night. "All I smell tonight is mac and cheese."

Diane glanced at her daughter, looking for her tells – a fluttering of the eyelids, pursing her lips. Nothing. Either she was better, or a better liar.

"We'll hold off on more sessions then, Bethy," Diane conceded. "Let's see how things go."

After school, friends, homework, her room and Bogart had all been pronounced "fine" and a minute after Beth's dish had been dried, she retreated to her room.

There, she cranked the CD Matt had sent her, Melissa Etheridge, just ten seconds of window-shaking noise, before lowering it to a reasonable volume. She methodically unlocked and opened the window her mother closed each day and started in on her homework.

Beth was not stupid. By the time she started high school, with its flood of new faces and opportunities, Beth had a steady hand with the eyeliner, a place on the dance team and the school newspaper and a new person to be. She talked too much and laughed a little too loud, but shrugged off those things she knew a 14-year-old girl shouldn't know or see. By her junior year of high school, weird Beth was a distant memory. Girls wanted to be her friend and boys wanted in her pants, like any normal 16-year-old.

She was so convincing and so utterly normal that she almost convinced herself that it was all a dream. Almost.

In the spirit of every normal teenager, she was dying to leave home. Her open window was more to remind her she could always get out than to let some imaginary friend in.

Every weekend she had some place else to be – the beach with Sarah, a concert in San Jose, the backseat of a boyfriend's car, shopping in Salinas. Like a rubber band, she pulled herself as far out as she could just to snap back home a day later.

One weekend she wandered to the bank, withdrew 500 from the college fund her mother thought she didn't know about and bought plane tickets to Colorado, where Matt was in grad school.

"I have an interview at UC," she announced just before her mother headed to bed that night.

"Which campus are you looking at? L.A.? Berkeley?" her mother paused. "I thought maybe you could talk to my friend at Stanford."

Beth gave her mother a suffering stare.

"The University. Of. Colorado." she enunciated. "I already bought the place tickets. It's in a week."

"Beth, I just think that's a little far."

"It wasn't too far for Matt."

"You're not Matt, as you remind me every time you get in trouble," her mother sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Not tonight, Beth. Please."

The little lines around her mother's eyes suddenly seemed deeper to Beth. The line between her eyes a deep ridge. Her mother looked old and tired.

The rage died in Beth as quickly as it started. She had gone through the motions of collecting admissions material for the school, talking to the recruiter about the journalism program. But she knew she wasn't leaving L.A.

"Fine, Mom," she couldn't seem to thaw her voice. "But I already bought the tickets, so I'm going."

********

The rhythm of Bella's walk lulled Beth into a mellow state, the sun filtering through the leaves and a cool spring wind blowing the smells of the forest. The thud of hoofs and creak of the leather saddle brought back memories of her father. His suit gone, jeans and flannel, lifting her up on a horse at Nana and Papa's, with the reins tucked in his hands. His grin when Beth clutched saddle horn and squeezed her little legs like she would gallop off into the sunset.

"Hold tight, baby," she almost heard his voice from far away.

Beth squeezed her eyes shut. The tears came at the oddest times. A minute ago, she would have said she was happy. Riding alone between sun and shadows. Suddenly, that seemed immeasurably sad.

********

Mick had never been to Colorado. Josef had tried to woo him into joining him on any number of trips, but despite the comfortable cold, Mick just didn't see himself as a skier.

Finally Josef had found the bribe that would work: the girl.

"I know something you don't know," Josef announced at the end of Friday night poker.

"Given you had a 350 year head start, that's pretty likely," Mick rolled the bottles against the green felt, liking the swish of liquid despite himself.

"I know something new you don't know, smart ass."

"Do tell," Mick gave a nod and a half smile to the freshie who'd wandered in. He quickly pocketed the vials.

"Not that I want to encourage you in your stalker-ish ways, but the girl -- she flew out to Colorado last night for the weekend," Josef ran a finger down the neck of his midmorning snack. She shivered. Josef tilted her back and bit. For a moment, the light sucking sound was the only one in the room as Mick considered the information.

After her accident, Mick had watched her again. The blood he'd pumped into her kept them tied, an unfortunate consequence that Josef assured would fade with time, though it would probably never disappear completely.

"On the bright side, eventually she'll die, buddy," Josef had kidded, only for Mick to disappear for a month.

He did everything he could to close her off from his font of regret and endless memory.

This time Mick treated it as more business than pleasure, an obligation he wouldn't walk away from. That way it didn't hurt so much when he suddenly realized that she would soon stop being a child and a grownup Beth would be even more complicated.

Unfortunately for Mick, he'd used Josef's resources on occasion to watch from a distance. A staff photographer for tracking her in the daytime, Josef's expertise to make sure the meager college fund her father had left for her grew faster than it had any right to.

"How do you know?"

"A few hundred dollars unexpectedly left the account yesterday and skied its way on over to United Air," Josef replied, licking a cool line over the fresh wounds.

"So, you telling me out of the kindness of your heart?"

Josef gave a sharp laugh.

"Try the need for speed. And company. I bought a little company that sells snowmobiles, ski equipment and all that a while ago. I want to check it out. And I want you to come with me," the older vampire announced.

Mick weighed how annoyed his was at being coerced and how much he wanted to have Beth nearby.

"When do you want to leave?"

"Tonight," Josef gave an evil grin, leading his friend downstairs. "I took the liberty of sending one of the girls over for your things during the game."

Mick sighed as a freshie met them at the bottom of the stairs, bearing a suitcase he recognized from the back of his closet.

"Deal is, you have to hit the slopes with me for six hours before I tell you where in Colorado she is."

"You do know I'm a private investigator, right? Someone who could probably investigate that fact pretty quickly?"

Josef frowned.

"Two hours?"

"How 'bout I pour the shots and give you a good push at the top of the hill?"

********

Beth was a few lengths behind the rest of the group, college coeds on romantic dates, kids her age with siblings and friends, giggling sorority girls. The trail guide hadn't counted heads in a while and probably hadn't noticed how far back Beth was.

On a whim, she pulled the reins and veered her horse to the right where a much smaller trail headed downhill. The brush was cleared, but all the tracks were dried. She had the urge to run her horse far and fast.

Once she was out of earshot, she eased Bella into a faster pace, just shy of a gallop. The rustle of the branches, the pounding of hoofs filled her ears.

Beth eyed a downed branch further down the trail, arching a foot or so into the air. She urged her horse faster, to a full gallop, straightened her legs slightly and tightened her calves.

Bella soared into the air, a graceful arc over the wood, Beth neatly bent above her. The beast landed, pulling the breath out of Beth.

She gave herself a little cheer of success.

It cut short when she saw a man's shadow in the corner of her eye. Beth jerked around, accidentally pulling back on the bit and shifting her weight.

In response, Bella snapped to a stop. She reared and Beth felt her balance go out of center. She released the reins as instinct took over – arms and legs tucked, her backside slammed into the dirt as she rolled off, tumbling away from the horse's rearing legs.

With a solid force, she smacked her shoulders and head against a tree stump, sending edges of white into her vision.

Mick froze. He felt the fall coming the moment her head turned toward him. Every muscle screamed to run over and catch her, but that wasn't exactly watching from the shadows and quietly making sure she was okay.

It had been stupid to track her. He'd compromised with Josef, taking two runs on skis that he had, in fact, not liked, and finishing the night on snowmobiles that he did.

Now Josef was happily ensconced in a freezer somewhere outside Aspen. He was miles away following a girl on a horse, like a dog.

It was as though she waited for him to be nearby to do something immensely stupid. Like leave the safe guided ride for a solitary gallop down an unknown trail in the forest. Maybe he should have read her stories about what happened to little girls who wandered through the woods alone. Not every wolf was a vegetarian like him.

He heard the smack of skull against timber, the odor of blood. For an impossible second, she didn't move and he vowed to walk into the sun.

Then a groan.

"Dammit," Beth swore definitely and rubbed the lump at the edge of her helmet. A scrape, a bump. Nothing more. 

The horse was a few feet away, casually chewing on weeds by the side of the trail. Beth wandered over, grabbed the reins and moved toward the stump. Mick darted between two trees as the rays of the falling sun bore down on him.

Beth froze. She stopped in mid-climb and stared into the woods, deep into the shadows.

"Hello?" her voice echoed. "Are you there?"

Every part of him wanted to scream "yes," he was there. He wanted it as much as he wanted to catch her. As much as he wanted to watch her every moment of the day in all the trivial moments that made up one beautiful human life.

But, like most of his life, he was still and silent.

For just a second, she felt the familiar presence. Comforting, tense, unceasing ... It brought memories of her guardian angel with his cool touch and solid wall against the bad things. In a moment of unguarded fantasy, she let the dark shadow take the shape of her memory.

She called out. Nothing.

Beth climbed the stump and mounted her horse. She galloped down the trail, the faint rustling of leaves and the occasional flash of shadow following her the whole way.


	8. Chapter 8

Beth liked the burn. The hot trail of vodka down her throat, the smooth path of scotch as it settled in her stomach – good scotch, anyway – the perfume-y echo of schnapps.

It was rare that Beth wasted time at parties with a cheap beer in her hand. If she was going to get drunk, she'd do it fast and hard with shot after shot until the room swirled around her and her limbs grew heavy.

And it was, therefore, particularly out of the ordinary that she was downing a Michelob draft at a bar in downtown L.A. It was her third congratulatory drink in the last hour and she was just about done.

Yes, it was a big deal that she'd won an award for her work. Her piece on how the campus clinic had forced rape victims to wait hours for a doctor and then "misplaced" several rape kits was the first story of substance she had done and the first one that earned her any recognition. In between typing up police dockets and inane stories about the student government, she'd actually begun to doubt whether she was any good at journalism and, worse, whether she wanted to be.

Now Beth was trying to decide between the more respectable and rapidly dying print journalism and the sexier, shallower world of broadcast news. Tonight, sexy sounded just right.

"What's the matter with this place?" Beth announced, polishing off her beer and letting slip an unladylike, though quiet, belch. Another reason she didn't drink beer. "The lights, the beer, everything. This bar is awful."

She made a face and stood. A little wobbly, but she caught herself on the bar.

"Let's go," she demanded of her editor, a scrappy blond who was half in the lap of one of the sports reporters and completely ignoring her star reporter. Beth looked around. Her friends were either even drunker than she was or on the prowl.

Beth set her glass down unceremoniously and burst out of the bar into the night. She sighed and took a deep breath of the spring air. She almost choked on the combination of smog, trash, vomit and piss that greeted her.

"Fuck," she stumbled a bit. That was supposed to be fun, invigorating. Clear her head or something. Instead, she fled the patch of nastiness and hailed a cab.

One cruised up. It was early for barflies to be relocating, but this one didn't seem to mind.

"Know any good bars? Dark and – " Beth lowered her voice melodramatically - "sexy?"

The driver looked at her in the rear view mirror, staring intently, before he laughed and pulled away from the curb. The chill of his air conditioner on full blast forced Beth to realize she had left her demure summer sweater, with her cell phone in its pocket, somewhere in the bright booths of the last bar.

The cab headed off into the night to parts unknown.

*********

Josef swung his club and sent his ball sailing across the fairway of the eighth hole. He gave a wolf whistle.

"That, my friend, is perfection," Josef hopped on the golf cart, readying to careen down to the green.

"The PGA doesn't know what it's missing," Mick braced himself. Josef's need for speed didn't stop with the Ferrari.

"So I'm up, what three strokes? That's three pints, Mick. Pricey round of night golf tonight," Josef eyed the nearing green. "And, unless you birdie this hole, that'll be four."

"So you're assuming your ball is on the green."

Josef slowed the cart and squinted down the fairway.

"Damn it." The ball had hit a decline and rolled into the rough while Mick's ball was just a foot or two from the hole. "Four hundred years and 20 years of lessons and you'd think I could beat some punk from L.A. without breaking a sweat."

"You'd think that, huh?" Mick cocked his head to the side and swung.

A few minutes later, the two were just two strokes apart.

"I'm still winning. Last hole. No way I'm making this in less than two," Josef announced.

"Whatever gets you through the night," Mick called from his perch on the cart, draining his flask of blood and booze.

As Josef teed off, Mick's cell phone buzzed.

"St. John."

"Mick, it's Edward," came the tight voice Mick recognized as one of the bartenders at Dreaming Darkly, a favorite haunt of Josef's.

"Looking for the big man? He's about to lose a round of golf, so he might not be in the best mood," Mick heard Josef muttering under his breath from the driver's side. An insult to Mick's parentage and sexual preferences if he wasn't mistaken.

"No. It's you I wanted," the man sounded uncertain.

"What's wrong?"

"Are you missing one of your girls?" the bar sounds nearly drowned out the question.

"I don't have any girls," Mick let Josef go ahead, sinking his putt with a twirl of his club.

"Well, there's a drunk blonde here who has your scent. Most of the vamps are behaving themselves, but she's not and sooner or later someone who doesn't know you is gonna start to nibble."

"I'll be right there."

"I forfeit. Something's up," Mick slid into the driver's side.

"That girl is always ruining my fun," the eavesdropping Josef allowed the P.I. to race the cart back to the clubhouse, faster than even the elder vampire had driven it.

*********

Men had been sniffing around her all night. Gorgeous men, even a few beautiful women. She'd had her fair share of free drinks when she first walked in – this time straight liquor, no beer at this bar. She didn't even think this place served beer.

Beth wasn't sure exactly where she was. The taxi had woven in and out of industrial areas, past penthouses and to a secluded little place in sight of a beach. The bouncer hadn't asked for ID (which was good because she was pretty sure her fake wouldn't make it here), just leaned in and either sniffed her or looked down her top. Either way, he'd let her join the mass of writhing bodies pulsing to the heavy beats of some song she didn't know.

After her first vodka double with an amaretto chaser, the idea of grinding on the dance floor, with its flush of mellow red and blue lights making everything so lush and lovely, sounded perfect. She'd rubbed and twisted in time, danced like sex with music. Plenty of eyes flashed at her, but no one took her up on her drunken offers. Couples were ensconced in darkened booths, but no one came to drag her back to one.

So she'd headed back to the bar. The bartender wasn't particularly busy. For a place filled with bodies, it didn't seem like enough drinking was going on.

Too much thinking, Beth decided. She wasn't a fucking detective. Who the hell cared how much people drank? She flagged down the adorable bartender with his closely cropped hair and overly muscled chest. Not her type, but okay in a pinch.

"Can you give me a slippery nipple?" on tiptoes, Beth bent over the bar, nearly dumping her cleavage out of a little black dress that, without the sweater, was downright slutty.

He gave her a libidinous, promising grin and Beth's heart raced. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice shrieked that this was not her. She liked a little thrill, but this sort of thrill was likely to get her hurt. Or worse.

Yet when he leaned in to whisper to her and then immediately recoiled, she was pissed.

"I'll be right back," he said.

He disappeared round the corner, leaving Beth to pour herself back into her dress and wonder what was wrong with her tonight.

*********

The Benz squealed into place in front of the club. How the hell had she found her way here? Dreaming Darkly was far from the clubbing districts, heavily guarded and very dangerous. People were inside for exactly two things: fucking and feeding. Not necessarily in that order.

"Mick, move the car," hollered the bouncer as Mick breezed past him, whipping the keys behind him.

"If the cops show up, get it out of the way. But I'll be right back."

Inside, Mick spotted her draped over the bar. But it wasn't little Beth. He knew she had grown up. He knew she was in college. But suddenly she was legs and hips and breasts, all wrapped up in a dress that should be at least three inches longer in both directions.

The perfume of her blood was calling to half the vampires in the place. He was surprised that she hadn't been jumped long before he'd gotten here. Lucky for her, his stalker ways had left his scent, faint but present, on her. He'd meant it to protect her during late night walks across campus and waiting for the escort from the library to the dorms. Not vampire bars and human orgies.

Mick closed the gap between them in an instant. She threw her head back and downed another shot. Her hair was short, the chin-length cut that reminded him of the little girl in his arms so long ago.

But he knew that when she turned around, it wouldn't be her. That girl was gone. He took a breath. Eight years since he'd been this close, near enough to take her breath into his own lungs, to feel the embers of their connection stirring.

He sidled up beside her, moving a hand to the small of her back as she swayed on her feet.

"Hi there," came the breathy tone. Not her voice. This was velvety with liquor and sex.

"Hi," Mick strained to sound as friendly as possible. "Are you doing okay?"

"I'm fine. Just fine," Beth's eyes met his, barely focused. "Don't I know you?"

Her hand raised to his face, but Mick took a step back.

"I think I'd remember a pretty thing like you," no girl – no woman had been able to resist the St. John charm, not that he'd used it much in the past couple of decades.

She twisted toward him, giving him a full and decidedly uncomfortable view of her front side. He resisted the urge to shrug off his jacket and cover her with it.

Beth blinked, trying to reconcile her mind with her sight.

"No, you look like... someone I used to..." Beth screwed up her face and searched. She lifted her hand again, but mid-gesture plopped it on top of Mick's.

A chill went through Mick at the contact. Beth froze and stared, transfixed at their touching skin. Mick willed her to look away, imagining wall after wall of ice between them. Beth gave a shiver and let go.

"Maybe not," she seemed uncertain and, if Mick wasn't mistaken, the salt of tears teased at the air.

"Can I give you a ride home, Beth?" he tilted her toward the door and they were already in motion before she answered.

"Hang on, I've gotta settle up," she pivoted shakily as a hand descended into her cleavage, fishing around in her bra.

"I'll get it," Mick wanted to blush on her behalf. Why the hell didn't she have a purse? He plucked a bill from his wallet, not even glancing at how much and threw it on the bar.

"My mother told me never to get into the car with a stranger," Beth replied. "Next thing I know, you'll take me to a cabin in the woods to wait for my new daddy."

Mick winced.

"My name is Michael. There, now I'm not a stranger," Mick gave her his given name, not wanting to waste this moment on a lie.

"Hi Michael, I'm B-" Beth paused after another step. "Wait, you knew my name before. I never told you."

"Sure you did."

She stopped a precious few feet from the door.

"No," the fear trickled into her voice. "I didn't."

Mick glanced around. The clusters of vampires were looking at her, several with a downright hungry look and the smell of her fear wasn't helping. One, barely past fledgling, darted across the floor toward them. Mick was a minute away from tossing Beth over his shoulder and hauling her out of the lion's den.

"Okay, maybe you're right. Maybe we have seen each other before," Mick whispered. He let the wall of ice melt a little. Just a little. "Maybe you know me. Maybe you've always known me. Maybe you shouldn't trust me, but I think you do. And I think you're drunk and need a ride home, Beth."

Beth's unfocused eyes locked on his and still she hesitated. Mick let his eyes flash, for just a second, to the ice blue from her deepest memory and something clicked in her gaze.

"Okay, Michael. Let's go," She reached for his hand and let him lead her out of the club, into the night.

The windows of Beth's second-floor apartment, near the campus newspaper offices, was dark and silent. None of her roommates were there, which was good for Mick.

Beth had passed out in the car, the force of the liquor finally hitting her. Mick gathered her in his arms, the muscle memory striking him as he effortlessly lifted her from the passenger seat. She roused with the movement.

"I knew you were strong," her whisper held a hint of slur. She lifted her arms around his neck.

"Strong enough," Mick moved slowly. He let himself breathe in her smell, let it roll through him. Her heart was next to his, her beats urging his nearly silent one to give chase.

"Always stronger," she murmured. Mick opted for the stairs over the elevator. A small confined space didn't seem like a good idea at the moment

"Will you stay? Just for a little while?" the pleading was all seven-year-old Beth.

"You need to go to bed."

"Not yet. I'm too drunk, I'll throw up," Beth informed him.

At her door Mick realized that his lock picking kit was in the car and God only knew where she kept her key in that ensemble.

"Beth, where's your key?"

A pause.

"In my sweater."

"You're not wearing a sweater."

"I was," a petulant response that prompted a grin on his part.

"But you're not any more, so I'm going to have to figure out a way to get you into your apartment without breaking down the door," Mick explained slowly, as though he would to a child.

Beth groaned. The buzz of the liquor was wearing off as her body went about the business of removing the alcohol from it.

"Jen. In 203. She has a spare."

Mick moved to set Beth down, but she tightened her grip.

"Don't let me go."

And so Mick found himself disturbing a bookish looking girl – woman, about Beth's age – embarrassedly wrapping a robe tight over raggedy pajamas, a flickering TV muted in the living room and a pile of books spread across a table behind her. She glanced at Beth's moaning form in Mick's arms and hesitated, but surrendered the key.

Once in her apartment, Mick headed straight for the bedroom. He set her in her bed gently.

"Beth, I'm going to go. You're gonna be fine," Mick whispered. Her eyes opened in a panic and she lurched forward, grabbing at him.

"No," Beth caught his hand and moved it to her forehead, then her cheeks, running his cold skin over her clamminess. "You feel so good."

Mick shrugged off his jacket and settled himself behind her, letting his chill be useful for once.

"Tell me a story," she murmured after a minute. Mick tensed. She knew, she remembered. Didn't she?

"All my stories end in blood or tears."

"Not all of them," she replied. "Not this one."

"This one isn't over yet."

Beth drifted out of consciousness again, sagging against him. He awkwardly arranged his arms to support her without touching much of her bare skin. Where his smell had been a hint before, now she'd be covered in it like one of Josef's freshies. Any vampires drawn to her would hopefully have the good grace to stay away from what was his.

Mick let himself enjoy her smell again, a connoisseur rolling the flavor but not drinking. No matter how many years passed, how she changed and evolved into a person, her scent was constant. Under the smell of her shampoo, her soap, her laundry detergent, even the pungency of human existence, there was Beth. Spicy and sweet, with the edge of dark, thanks to him. But together it made for a potent temptation.

He felt the push of fangs and the rumble of hunger echoed through his chest. With a flinch, he clamped down on the vampire with violence he usually reserved for career felons and rogue vampires.

Beth moved against him, rolling over face first across the bed. He could smell the nausea.

"I'm going to die," the muffled pronouncement sounded dire.

"No, Beth," Mick used the opportunity to remove himself from her. He slid off the bed and knelt to the side of it, pushing her hair away from her face. "You're going to live a very long time. You'll die warm in your bed surrounded by grandchildren, if I have stalk you for the rest of your life to do it. And as long as you don't do stuff like this again."

"It's too late, I'm going to die now."

Mick listened to the rhythms of her body. Too much alcohol, way too much. If he'd realized how exactly much, he might have taken her to the emergency room instead of her room.

He wasn't leaving any time soon, not until he was sure she was fine. He locked the door to her bedroom and came back to her. Mick arranged himself on the floor next to the bed, listening to her pulse, her breathing. Steady, a little too slow, but steady. He pulled her to the corner of the bed, so her face hung off the side.

Beth reached for him again. Her hand found his and he let it.

"Better," she sighed.

Mick pulled a dogeared book from her bedside, "Pride and Prejudice," and read to the sleeping woman. Breathing her in, he kept his cold hand in her warm one through the night.


	9. Chapter 9

_The whisper of hands, cool and smooth against her overheated skin. His rumbly voice in her ear. A kiss of fingers, pulling her hair through them._

_Beth focused every muscle on opening her eyes. She just wanted to see, to see him, the man at her side. But her body was a traitor._

_The voice stopped and her chest heaved._

_She couldn't seem to lift her heavy eyelids. A glimpse, just one to give substance to the dream._

_A caress, running down her cheek._

"Open your eyes, Beth."

The voice was wrong. Not deep enough. And now there was a poke. A pinch.

Beth's eyes flew open and her head snapped forward. The dim lights were getting brighter, the screen retreating into the ceiling.

Sean, the city beat reporter for the Times, was poking her.

"I know that EPA sewer mandates are boring, but if you start to snore, they'll notice," he teased.

"Oh God, sorry, I'm a night person," Beth shrugged. "Give me a good, old-fashioned crime scene at midnight over this stuff any day."

Sean gave a sympathetic smile. Beth retrieved the pen that had tumbled to her lap and began scribbling in her pad as the safety service director and city council started in on the finer points of waste management. She eyed the administrative assistant in the corner taking the minutes and figured she could sweet talk her way to a print-out of the PowerPoint presentation she'd missed.

It was the dream again. Even three years later, some nights she fell asleep hoping for it. But the ending never changed. She would never be able to convince her sleep-addled subconscious to reveal her mystery man.

The morning after, which she was sure wasn't that kind of morning after, as much as she wished otherwise, had been a blur of nausea, aches and stupidity. Her bladder had begun to outscream her head, finally driving her out of bed and into the harsh morning sunlight.

Sprays of water had pounded at her abused body but couldn't remove the haze, the darkness of the night in her memory.

She had remembered the first bar. Her grand exit, a cab, a dark club she could never seem to find again. Then nothing. Vague impressions of sex, of hunger, then, surprisingly of safety. Something familiar, like coming home. Cool relief.

Following the presence, something, someone she knew was hers, should be in her hands, she had chased down the night's events. Her editor had brought her sweater with keys and cell phone she hadn't had when she'd made it home. Which led Beth to her key-bearing neighbor, Jen.

"I've never seen him before. Older. Amazing eyes. And other parts," she had reported with a grin. "Too bad – this one was worth remembering."

There the trail ended. No one saw him at the bar or in the hall.

Alone in her bed for weeks, months, Beth had pushed at the dark edges of memory, trying to tease something more from the night. But all she had was darkness.

The inane back-and-forth over EPA regulations wound down and, finally, Beth scribbled her last bit of personal shorthand and the meeting adjourned. Her first job, the city beat at the California Daily. It wasn't only in darkened conference rooms that Beth felt like falling asleep. City council meetings, school board meetings, planning commission, zoning boards. Endless cycles of rules and red tape.

Six more months, she promised herself. Six more months of paying her dues and she'd have something on her resume for the next rung on the ladder.

Beth sighed and edged into the circle of reporters getting quotes from the self-important city council members.

If she'd looked to the back of the room, if she'd craned her neck and squinted her eyes into the dark, she might have seen the shadow. And if she'd looked into the shadows, she'd have seen.

It had been almost three years since their brief moment in the midst of Beth's drunken reverie.

He thought that night would fill him up, but all it did was make him hungrier for her to look up at him with a trust in him like daylight breaking through the night, the way she had been for him.

But she didn't remember a thing. The lengths Beth's mind went to hide him away pricked at him. Until the sun burned him from the outside in, she was the one thing he would never forget.

Her selective memory was the one thing protecting them both, though. Mick had come to a strange moment of self-realization after that night. Under the oppressive blanket of guilt and fear and disgust with his impossible addiction to her, he wanted to be her white knight.

And he was on the verge of surrendering to that urge. Even now every bit of him was intent on seeping through to her. To carry her bag like a schoolboy, to open doors for her. To coldcock her boss for her.

Any more encouragement from her and the flood of her would sweep over him and he'd never surface. And maybe he didn't want to.

Which was what brought him to the crowds of council meetings, press conferences, the dark exits of the California Daily, to places he knew Beth would be. If she got into trouble – no, when – he would be there. Close, just out of sight, in case she needed him.

**********

Six months later...

Beth clenched her fists, digging purplish crescents into her palms. Paul Cortese, the antique of a managing editor, bifocals perched on his nose, gut poking over his slacks and Jersey accent coming out in full force, was glaring at her over his desk.

Cortese had summoned her into his office with a point and crook of the finger. Like he was calling a dog.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?"

"I  _thought_  I was getting a scoop on the homeless hit-and-run. I got photos, I got an exclusive look at the body and an early copy of the coroner's report," Beth shot back.

"What you did was break into the coroner's office --"

"I was escorted in by one of the lab techs."

"Hey, you talked, now I'm gonna talk," Cortese's tone was sharp. "You've got the coroner pissed, the police department talkin' lawsuits and a credibility problem for the whole paper, not to mention you."

Beth froze. After more than a year at the California Daily, she'd landed her first story on the crime beat, away from the endless meetings, political backstabbing and bullshit, and she could see it slipping away.

"Paul, I just wanted to get a good story. One no one else would have. I didn't do anything illegal."

"You don't have to be illegal to be unethical. You're young, you don't know," Cortese softened. "We have to play the game with these people. We have to ask for what we want and they have to choose to give it. You can't bribe a morgue attendant for every story. We have to be able to ask the coroner, the police. They've gotta be willing to talk to us and know we're not gonna pull this shady shit. Look, you've got a good head on your shoulders and a nose for news, but you report the news. You do not make the news. Are we clear?"

"Yes." It came as a shade past a hiss from Beth's pursued lips. She paused and gulped down her pride. "The story, is it still mine?"

"What do you think?"

"I think I have to give Hernandez my notes," Beth saw the crime beat slipping away.

"Wrong. I don't want your bullshit sullying his reputation. Finish the story. Follow the rules. Consider this your first and last warning," Cortese turned toward his computer and Beth knew he was done with her.

"Thank you."

 

********

 

Beth arranged the protective headphones and squared her stance. Following through on her lessons, she gripped firmly, right hand wrapped around the grip, her left hand circled around it.

She stared down the sights at the target.

"I'm good, damn it."

A squeeze at the mental image of Cortese's blustery face.

"They're lucky to have me."

At the asshole coroner.

"In five years, this paper will be nothing. I'll be hot shit and making whatever fucking news I need to."

At the morgue snitch.

"Low-paying, brain boiling bullshit."

At Cortese again.

"Grrr," Beth just growled, squeezing out every round with a few extra, pointless clicks for good measure at the end.

As she reloaded, she heard footsteps behind her on the shooting range. A woman not much older than Beth with a perky bob of brunette hair peeked around the corner.

"Professional frustrations?" the woman asked with a smirk.

"Such is the life of a reporter," Beth replied, red creeping into her cheeks. She must have been louder than she'd thought.

"I'm Marissa Robinson. I'm with MediaWorks in the online news division."

"Beth Turner. Possibly soon-to-be-unemployed city reporter for California Daily," Beth set her gun down and shook hands with the other woman.

"Turner? Did you do the piece on felons in the dorms at UCLA?"

Beth pulled off her headphones. Apparently she and Marissa were the only people here. The lone hunter-type at the end had left.

"Yes, that was one of mine. I don't usually get the crime stories, but that came up through one of my board of education meetings. I'd love to do more stories like that one. I think I've met my lifetime requirement of pompous city council meetings."

Marissa grinned.

"I know. I don't know why the old guard thinks that's always a good lead story. Unless they're raising taxes or screwing someone, people don't care what those guys are up to. If newspapers tried something a little... sexier, maybe their readers wouldn't be dropping like flies."

"Seriously, could you talk to my editor about that?" Beth sighed.

"I could talk to mine," Marissa rummaged in her bag and pulled out a business card. "Here. You do good work and we're getting ready to start up a little online magazine that might be right up your alley. The pay is still shit, but our staff is young, passionate and they've got a great vision. Give me a call tomorrow and I'll see if I can set you up an interview with the division head."

"Really? That's amazing of you," Beth fished her own business card from her purse. She added her personal cell number and handed it over.

"Amazing nothing. I believe in fate. I think you and I were supposed to meet here today. Now all you have to do is take a little action," Marissa collected her things and headed for the exit.

"Nice to meet you!" Beth called out. She finished reloading and devoted the rest of the round to Cortese and the management of the California Daily.


	10. Chapter 10

"Fuck!" The swear erupted with the crunch of metal and plastic and screech of brakes. Beth rummaged in her glove compartment for her insurance information and slammed it shut once she had the little card.

When she had begun her call to her editor at Buzzwire, there had only been two or three cars scattered through the parking lot. Now she'd managed to rear-end the only car in sight. Thank God her lead foot hadn't been square on the gas yet or she'd be towing her car home.

Her annoyance fizzled a little when she saw him, bent over the crumpled bumpers.

This guy was too cute for his own good. And he wore a suit. Nothing good or fun came from men in suits. But there was something about him.

"I'm sorry," they both began.

"It was my fault," the man informed her, giving her a smile with full dipple, and stood up. He was taller than Beth had expected. "I didn't think you were moving and I just stopped looking. I should have been more careful."

"No, I was on the phone and didn't check either," a giggle was bubbling up in her throat. Very unlike Beth. Calm, cool, sometimes hyper, but never giggly.

"I'm Josh Lindsay."

"D.A.'s office, right?" Beth had seen his name on the docket entries that made their way to her desk. The new assistant district attorney was ambitious and, in her opinion, overly optimistic about what an avalanche of depositions could accomplish.

"Yes," he delivered another killer smile, one that reminded her of male models and toothpaste commercials. "Does my reputation precede me?"

"Not exactly, I'm Beth Turner. I'm with Buzzwire," she flicked back her jacket and tapped her press badge.

"Is that a new blog?"

"More like CNN minus the TV broadcasts. Plus a little Page Six," Beth said. "Actually, a lot of Page Six."

"Sounds juicy," he bit back a slight grimace.

"I know. But I'm less Paris Hilton and more crime beat. Except today I guess I took that 'beat' part literally," Beth rubbed the silver scratch her old beater had carved into his new looking Ford. "I think your car took the brunt of the blow."

"Seriously," Josh lifted her hand from the car, his touch lingering. "It was my fault. Let me make this up to you. I'd hate to think you were out there in the world thinking badly of me," he said.

Beth moved to protest again, then thought of her insurance rates and his eyes and shut her mouth.

"What do you have in mind?"

"Friday night. I know a good bar, good people, so-so drinks. I'll get this baby buffed and shined for a night out on the town." Every one of his smiles melted Beth's heart a little more. She hesitated for a moment.

This was not the guy she usually went for. Beth aimed for guys a lot less … respectable than this. Musicians, unemployed artist types, someone with at least a 5 o'clock shadow by 10 a.m. And guys like Josh never went for her. She was too loud, too brash, too pushy and too competitive. But there was something sweet about him and something that said he was sweet on her.

"Okay."

Josh pulled out his cell and Beth rattled off her number.

"I'll call you," he hopped into his car, giving a little wave.

**********

Beth had expected a martini bar. Or maybe a microbrewry. Something with clean walls and spotless glasses. Not this.

Josh's neat little car was parked in front of the Downtowner between a Pontiac 6000 and a Honda Civic pockmarked with rust. He fit in about the same inside. It was clean but dark. The smell of spilled beer permeated the room and the main decorating theme was Beer posters. The regulars seemed to know him, though. There were waves from the bar when they walked in. A few lecherous grins, a couple of comments.

"Sorry," Josh flashed his grin again as he pulled out a chair for her. "They like to give me a hard time. My dad used to work here."

"Really?" Beth couldn't reconcile the pinstripe suit of the parking lot with the dive bar they were now in.

"He did a little of everything - bartending, checked the books, bounced guys with too many drinks and not enough sense," Josh said. "I'll be right back."

He came back with two bottles of honey-colored beer and Beth resisted the urge to make a face.

"You may not be into beer," Josh caught a whiff of her distaste, "but this is the best beer you'll ever taste, Allagash. A friend of mine from Maine makes it. Just try it."

Beth grabbed the mug and sniffed. With a wrinkle of her nose, she chugged.

"Not bad," she admitted. "It sort of tastes like wine."

"See, told you," Josh poured his own glass and leaned back, looking straight into her eyes. "So tell me what it's like on the other side of the microphone. What's it like to be Beth Turner of Buzzwire?"

"I haven't done a broadcast yet," Beth reddened. His eyes were actually twinkling. "I'm just doing copy, writing the stories."

"So tell me some stories."

Four hours, two pitchers of beer and another bar later, Beth was buzzed and standing awkwardly on a rubber mat in front of a big screen.

"You know lawyers have game, right?" Josh clutched the club in his hands, giving it a twirl.

"Get the ball on the green before you start the smack talk, Mr. Lindsay," Beth raised an eyebrow. Josh turned to the screen, raised the club and sent the digital ball flying.

"Can the smack talk commence now?"

Beth swatted him against the shoulder, letting her hand linger a second too long.

"That's all the smacking we'll be having around here." She moved to where he'd stood. Beth tried to remember the golf stance. Did you lock your arms or not? Bend the knees?

Suddenly, Josh's warm body was against hers. The smooth flesh of his tan arms intertwined with her pale ones. His chin sunk into her blond curls.

"Here, let me," the whisper sent echoes down her spine. She felt the tight cords of his muscles guiding her slack arms up. Beth just wanted to breathe in his scent of mints and cologne.

He smelled pretty good right now and Beth wanted a taste.

She tipped her head back, offering her waiting lips to his. She didn't have to wait long.


	11. Chapter 11

Beth stared at him from the buzzing screen. If Mick let his eyes focus too tightly, she descended into an amalgamation of pixels and light, lost in the details. But there she was – her face, with its pixie smile, her cascade of curls, gave him a challenging stare from the black background.

Her mug shot, her byline, her words were fixed for him to see, beating across the glow of the computer screen. He couldn't resist the urge to read her, to listen to her tell him tales again.

Mick didn't think he could stand more from her. Any closer and he would fall, into the dark place where her eyes could flash in terror, where his would flash in hunger of one kind and another, where she would see him without the innocence of a child to hold her gaze.

But her voice called to him, her eyes stared at him from across the chasm. Mick had no idea what was on the other side of the abyss, but he knew it wouldn't be good for either of them.

It was good that she'd been playing it safe. Beth had been almost annoyingly well-behaved since joining Buzzwire. A few murders, corrupt cops and perverts in all shapes and sizes, but mostly she'd been doing the dirty work, researching and fact-checking other people's work, writing the occasional story of her own. More and more of her byline lately.

The last time he'd watched over her, she'd been lit up by a wall of fire against the night sky. She was lit up by the not-so-distant flames, eyes intent on the clusters of men battling the blaze. He could hear her voice drifting to him across the field already eaten alive by the wildfire. The mellow rhythm of her questions, soothing sounds she made as her pen scratched paper.

Her scent had blown downwind to him, across the fresh turned soil, drowned in smoke and the heat of cooling cinders. Her clothes were dirty and her hair whipped in the hot winds. She looked wild and wonderful.

She'd turned toward him, marching away from the raging backdrop of the fire. He could see her pen moving in rapid strokes, scrawling notes, her lips moving silently as she sketched the scene into her consciousness.

Time stood still as she moved away from trees burning bright as the sun. Her movements, her breath, her beating heart overwhelmed the crackle and roar.

Without conscious movement, he'd cast off the safety of distance for darkness, leaning in the shadow of her news van, the firelight flickering shadows and light across his face. How many of her steps was she from him? How weak were human eyes? How willing was he to let her see?

Her eyes rose, squinted at his dark form. Twenty steps, twelve steps –

"Josh?" her voice had been uncertain as her heart leapt in a rat-a-tat rhythm. Her eyes began to focus.

Mick grasped at the shadows again, running from the light.

The heat of the wild fires faded to a distant memory as the cool breeze of an L.A. winter blew him back to her door. The dark days brought him to her. Days that ran into night in a ceaseless cycle of blood, violence and longing. Nights that dredged up the basest parts of him and pulled him to her, with the hope that she could give him something, some sign that even if she'd moved on, she hadn't forgotten

Mick launched himself to her landing, jumped to her window ledge and peered in. More than a month past the holiday, the glow of Christmas lights cast strange shadows against the living room wall. The tang of cold Kung Pao on the counter wafted through the gap between the French doors. The doors to her bedroom were thrown open, night shadows creeping across the bed.

Beth was in bed, but she wasn't sleeping. She was thrashing, moaning. He could feel the sharp bite of her fear on the air.

"No, no," the knocking of her heart against her chest drowned out everything else. His world shrank to the convulsing blonde two rooms too far away. Her unbridled terror became his as it blew the tattered remains of their blood bond to new life. Scenes from her nightmare scalded him.

_Crimson nails, a shade past caress to cut, pressed into pale flesh. The whisper of white. A kiss on the cheek so cold it burned._   
_Sharp teeth grinned._   
_Then a deep voice, "I'll eat you up."_   
_Nails bit at her skin, puckering, ripping away layers of skin beneath to the ribbons of blood waiting. The claws dipped into the red and wrote on the shredded parchment of her skin. Xs and Os, hatch marks of Sanskrit, looping letters she couldn't read._   
_"Mommy loves you," it hissed with its sweet venom._   
_Walls grew up around her and the ceiling snaked with shadows._   
_And the walls became burning things all around._   
_The woman in the moon, the woman was the moon, bearing down, growing bigger and bigger until she ate the fire alive._   
_"Tell Mommy you love her, baby."_   
_And then the floor was sinking sand under her little feet, the breath of the woman hot from her cold mouth poured over her. Down through the fine bits to the earth. Burying herself at the edge of the ocean as the moon fell on top of her._   
_The gnashing of teeth, terrible roars. Silver eyes and terrible claws._   
_Then the deep voice again. "Be still!"_   
_His blue eyes staring at the moon eyes without blinking. Teeth, row after row after sharp teeth eating away the night sky. Until there was nothing but the sharp teeth and ice blue consuming her world as fire chased them and her blood poured out._

 

A strangled scream cracked through the night, burning through the connection. Mick's senses returned to the room.

He picked up a second, slower heartbeat, faster now. Foreign arms wrapped around a shaking Beth.

"Beth, you're dreaming," the voice rumbled against her skin. "Wake up, sweetie."

Beth's blue eyes opened with a gasp, staring straight ahead. They flitted into the distant darkness before locking on the man peering down at her. Her hands settled in the man's as the waking world overtook her nightmare.

"I'm sorry, Josh," tears slipped down her face. Mick's hand moved to catch them and met glass.

She nestled herself into the arms of this Josh. The name she'd called at the fire.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Josh's hands ran through her hair, soothing her.

A valley of silence as the two held each other. Mick thought she wouldn't speak, but her voice came to him, muffled, a whisper against Josh's bare chest.

"When I was little, I was taken. Kidnapped," Beth's words pumped out of her in spurts. "A woman in white. She took me. Away. A cabin. Or a house. I... I don't remember much. Her face, something wrong with her face. Screams, fire, blood."

Josh's fingers moved in tight circles against her shoulder, still silent.

"At night, I can't run from her. She eats me alive at night, in the moonlight," the tears were slower.

"How long did she have you?"

"Forever, a few days. It's all a blur now of blood and tears. And fire," Beth's lungs pumped in time with Josh's. Mick's lethargic heart beat his own countertime.

"How did they find you?" Josh prompted.

Mick froze. She had to remember. How could she forget?

"I was rescued," Beth sounded disconnected, detached as she settled against Josh's chest. A flicker of a smile. Maybe. "My mother used to tell me it was my guardian angel. But nights like these he seems pretty far away."

"Who was he?"

"I don't know. I think I used to. I could see his face, his eyes, him. But he's gone now and all I have are the memories," Beth broke his quiet heart.

"She's gone, too, Beth, and you're fine," Josh kissed Beth's head. "And someone up there loved you enough to send an angel your way."

"Where's my angel tonight?" she choked on the words. "I see it again and again. Her face, the fire. I don't remember much, but sometimes I think that's worse. Sometimes I feel like it broke me. Something isn't right inside me and I don't know how it happened. And I have no idea how to fix it."

"Everything looks fine from here," Josh squeezed her closer. Mick wanted to squeeze him. Wanted to throw him out of the room and tell Beth that she was perfect. That the only dark thing about her was the vampire at the window. And that was easily remedied.

"Some days I'm just waiting for you to find out how broken I really am," Beth turned away from both men, her face hiding in the pillows, her lone guttural sob barely muffled.

"To live through that and not live your life in fear," Josh shook his head. "You are an amazing woman. You found a lightness of being in a dark, dark place."

His lips pressed against her hand, fluttering kisses over each finger. "Beth, I love you. I love every part of you. I love your questions, your truth, your beauty, your passion, your strength. I love you when you're broken and I love you when you're whole. I love the pieces, all the pieces of you."

He held a silent Beth in the bedroom dark. Then she turned back to Josh. She moved one hand toward his mouth, tracing his lips. A tiny smile peeked out.

"I think you're my angel."

Without waiting for more, Mick fled. He suddenly remembered what suffocating felt like. The pressure sent him to the ground. Running, hard and fast into the night.

He tried to outrun her smile and her touch, the memories of open windows and promises of a girl now gone, his shadow over her, teeth and hunger, the yearning that was worse than the hunger, the hope for something more.

When at last the air came back to him, it simply let him burn.


	12. Chapter 12

After 22 years of pacing to her heartbeat, Mick forced a new rhythm to his nights. He got up, he poured a glass, he pricked a vein. He dressed. He went into the world.

He did not go to the little apartment in Long Beach. He did not wait at windows. He did not linger in nearby shadows.

He cleaned her out of him. Aborted the eyes, the touch, the smile from his insides. She was gone like she was never there, the absence weighing as much as the presence.

To Josef's. Without her.

To the morgue and its dead things. Without her.

To strangers' homes and hotel beds. Without her.

Home. Without her.

Beth had no home in him now.

He poked at the hole where she'd been, testing his own raw flesh with moments of her. He read her work, he saw her face from a comfortable distance of pixels. He felt for the pain nightly and was happy to find it a dull throb.

Until the night her face wasn't just a static stare. It was her. Her face, stark against a wash of dark and blood, brought him back to her.

The first time in months he'd seen her in any place but the recesses of his mind. He could feign surprise, as though her presence was a shock to his system. But he'd been waiting for this, the last temptation of Mick.

The spot was familiar, but the body behind her wasn't. An awkward turn of limbs and joints, the spill of blood in water. And all he could see was her, so close.

Dead blood arced through him and, in moments, Mick was there. He could smell her over the blood and death there. He was in his element, the currents blowing toward him, blood on the air; and she was in hers - camera-ready, a challenge before her. The tumbling water muffled her heartbeat and he couldn't be sure the tune was the same. Evidence washing away, Mick thought. Why didn't they turn it off?

And then he saw her.

Her blond head bobbed easily underneath the police tape. The officiousness of the crime scene slid aside for her, no cops barked questions, MEs kept at the body, her pace even and steady, unhurried as though she knew the world would be at a standstill around her. No eyes on her but his.

Profile against the curtain of water, cold and barefoot, legs bare to the knee. Heel to toe, moving through the water, a dancer's step. The memory of another dance hit him, tiny limbs in a bright bedroom, white hem of a nightgown floating in circles as she twirled on the other side of the pane, eyes open to the moonlight. He remembered that child of the night -- tiny, cool hands on his face, the world moving in her orbit, his heart caught by her gravity -- 18 years and a world apart from this woman now. Her and not her.

The shock of the familiar and alien, as he watched her, walking barefoot through a freezing fountain at two in the morning.

A man's voice chastised Beth, his voice bouncing her away from the body. And toward him.

Her wet footprints tracked across the warm concrete, her path about to crash into his. His chest tightened, the blood in him wasn't enough.

Mick's eyes fixed on her shadowed form, light behind her.

Shoes swinging in her hand, her dance steps now an easy stroll, her voice playing the scene and he froze as he caught the word. Vampire.

She came into the light again and he knew even the weakest human eyes could see him. She could see him.

"Do I know you?" Her breath caught at the sight of the man on the edge of the scene. She wanted to run her hands across his face like a blind woman searching for recognition. This man. There was something about him. Something very familiar, pulling her to him.

"You tell me." Mick dared her to find the truth in her memories, in his presence here. He let her voice echo in his head. Did they know each other any more? She was so damned close, with her rat-a-tat heart and easy smile. He'd cut the bloom, but the root remained.

"You're a cop, right?" Someone safe, strong. She shook at the cobwebs, feeling for the truth of him. The answer was there, close enough to taste.

"No." Simple truth. One of the few he could give her.

"Reporter?" It was wrong before it even left her mouth. She knew better than that. This man didn't scribble on a notepad. His hands were meant for other things.

"Nope." No lies and no easy answers this time. Her eyes were still on him and he wanted Beth, this Beth to see him.

"We've met before. you look very familiar," the hunger for his name, for who he was or who he should be brayed at her. There was something about him, that nose, the lips, the half-grin that answered her questions. But the shadow of memory was fading. She could be wrong. It didn't happen often, but it happened.

"Maybe I've just got one of those faces." He was getting drunk on her eyes, her gaze. It kept him rooted when he should be running. She didn't believe him and he thrilled in the knowledge. Something in him had stayed in her.

"Okay," Beth grabbed one more time at the flicker of memory and it was gone. But he was not.

"Question - what do you like better vampire slaying rocks LA or--"

"There's no such thing as vampires," he told the girl whose exposure to his world had been early and unequivocal. She'd touched fang, his blood had been in her veins. And here he was, giving half-hearted protest.

"I don't think the girl in the fountain would agree," Beth turned away from him. She wanted in that water. She wanted to bear witness almost as much as she wanted answers from her mystery man.

Her eyes off him, the spell was broken. Mick could move again. And, he did, out of her sight, but keeping her in his.


End file.
